Brazil's Telesp Celular opens digital line tender
Reuters, Thursday, March 05, 1998 at 19:35
SAO PAULO, March 5 (Reuters) - The cellular phone spin-off
of Brazil's federally-owned Telesp (SAO:TLS_.P) on Thursday began
taking bids from companies vying to install one million new
digital lines in Sao Paulo, officials said.
A spokesman for newly formed Telesp Celular SA said the
tender was open and competing bidders have until March 12 to
turn in their proposals.
The winner of the contract to install the lines will be
announced 60 days later, he said.
Created last month out of Telesp's cellular services,
Telesp Celular operates more than 1.1 million analog cellular
terminals in Sao Paulo and plans to add another 150,000 analog
lines by mid-1988.
The splitting of cellular services from Telesp and other
operating units of the federal Telebras (SAO:TEL_.P) system is
part of the government's plan for privatizing Brazil's telecom
sector, the largest in Latin America.
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Pent-up demand for cellphones in Sao Paulo is huge, with
some 2.6 million on Telesp's waiting list that could take years
to whittle down, officials said.
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A Telesp Celular official last week said that the company
hopes to have 200,000 of the new digital terminals installed
between October and December, with the remaining 800,000
installed in 1999.
But the spokesman said Thursday that Telesp Celular had not
decided yet when new digital line installations would begin.
"We had first scheduled the installation for June or July
1998, but the bidding process was suspended when Ericsson filed
a lawsuit against Telesp", the spokesman said.
Ericsson Telecomunicacoes SA (SAO:ERI_.P), a unit of Sweden's
Telefon AB LM Ericsson (SWED:LME.B), filed a lawsuit in November
alleging that Telesp's bid specifications favored other
competitors.
Telesp halted the bidding process, altered the bid
specifications and published them again, delaying the process,
he said.
Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service |
